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Luxor Temple - Nile Cruise Tours

The
Temple of Luxor was the center of the most important one,
the festival of Opet. Built largely by Amenhotep III and
Ramesses II, it appears that the temple's purpose was for a
suitable setting for the rituals of the festival. The
festival itself was to reconcile the human aspect of the
ruler with the divine office. During the 18th Dynasty the
festival lasted eleven days, but had grown to twenty-seven
days by the reign of Ramesses III in the 20th Dynasty. At
that time the festival included the distribution of over
11,000 loaves of bread, 85 cakes and 385 jars of beer. The
procession of images of the current royal family began at
Karnak and ended at the temple of Luxor.

By the late 18th Dynasty the journey was being made by
barge, on the Nile River. Each god or goddess was carried in
a separate barge that was towed by smaller boats. Large
crowds consisting of soldiers, dancers, musicians and high
ranking officials accompanied the barge by walking along the
banks of the river. During the festival the people were
allowed to ask favors of the statues of the kings or to the
images of the gods that were on the barges. Once at the
temple, the king and his priests entered the back chambers.
There, the king and his ka (the divine essence of each king,
created at his birth) were merged, the king being
transformed into a divine being.

The crowd outside, anxiously awaiting the transformed king,
would cheer wildly at his re-emergence. This solidified the
ritual and made the king a god. The festival was the
backbone of the pharaoh's government. In this way could a
usurper or one not of the same bloodline become ruler over
Egypt.

In
ancient Egypt the temple area now known as Luxor was called
Ipt rsyt, the "southern sanctuary", referring to the holy of
holies at the temple's southern end, wherein the principal
god, Amun "preeminent in his sanctuary", dwelt. His name was
later shortened to Amenemope. This Amun was a fertility god,
and his statue was modeled on that of the similarly Min of
Coptos. He also has strong connections to both Karnak and
West Thebes.

Known in ancient times as "the private sanctuary (Opet) of
the south," the temple proper is located south of Karnak.
The present temple is built on a rise that has never been
excavated and which may conceal the original foundations.
The early building may rest on a no longer visible older
structure dating back to the 12th Dynasty. However, since
neither the cult nor any part of the temple appears to
predate the early 18th Dynasty; the few Middle Kingdom
fragments found here more probably came from elsewhere and
were transported to Luxor after the original buildings were
dismantled.

The earliest reference to the temple comes from a pair of
stelae left at Maasara quarry, in the hills east of Memphis,
inscribed in regnal year 22 of the reign of Ahmose, c. 1550
BC. The text records the extraction of limestone for a
number of temples including the "Mansion of Amun in the
Southern Sanctuary." But structural evidence appears at
Luxor only during the co-rule of Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis
III c 1500 BC. These elements are now built into the triple
shrine erected by Ramesses II, c 1280 BC, the most
substantial remnant of Luxor temple's Tuthmosid phase. The
shrine was erected inside the first court, in the northwest
corner, and reused elements from the original chapel
dedicated by Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III.. This small
building had been the last of six barque stations built
along the road that brought Amun and his entourage from
Karnak to Luxor every year during the Opet Festival..